Well folks, you have all been asking me whether or not the economy was spinning up job opportunities or not. My answer was a resounding yes if you posted the question over the past 2-3 months. We are approaching 60 job openings here on SocialMatchbox.com (note: we have more product and software startup company jobs than the Washington Post and Craigslist combined these now) which is substantially higher than the single digit job listings from a few months ago. Unfortunately, with the economy headed in the right direction we are beginning to see quite a few defections to the West Coast and to Manhattan. Over the past few weeks I have heard from three of our Ruby on Rails community members who are making plans to make moves. Today I had lunch with a local startup company CTO that is watching his company’s funding runway run out right in front of him. He’s interviewing for jobs with medium to larged sized companies instead of startups because he can’t find a job at a startup right now. He isn’t alone. Last week I had a similar conversation with the head engineer of a later stage startup who is interviewing with larger companies. It is hard to believe that just three years ago companies would have been fighting to keep and hire these guys. Back then people could not find enough Ruby on Rails programmers, web developers, etc. to meet their business plan timelines.
Entrepreneurs, Executives, Academics, and VC’s and local politicians alike really need to have a heart to heart conversation about pumping more money into the DC market right now or they are going to be facing some much tougher hiring challenges over the next few years. It is a lot easier to get people to relocate once. Once they are gone it is really difficult to get them back and even harder to get new people to fill their shoes. We are fielding some great people who are going to work for Facebook, Google, Yelp, and many others. We should be finding ways to create the next Facebook, Google, Yelp, etc. here. Living Social is a great example of this. Let’s figure out how to make more like them. Maybe now is the right time for the DC government to start working to make it from dead last to a more respectable position on the places to do business list – at least that way we will be attracting startup founders and companies who will in turn bring jobs as opposed to training them for other cities.
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